Enter God's rest. Hebrews 4.

Remember what we said in class about chapters and verses in the Bible, and how they aren't inspired? As I'm reading through Hebrews, this is really apparent. In the past when I've studied the book, I've studied sections without regard to the chapters. In our reading for today, the first half of the chapter (4:1-13) stands on its own, but could be read with chapter three. And the rest of the chapter (4:14-16) should be read with 5:1-14. With that in mind, let's just look at the true rest of God, a continuation of the comparison of Jesus as the better Apostle than Moses.

The idea of sabbath rest is a powerful one in Hebrew thinking. Not only is there the day of sabbath, but there is the year of sabbath rest that comes every seven years, and the year of jubilee that comes the year after the seventh sabbath year -- that's seven times seven plus one = fiftieth year. In some sense, they also considered Canaan to be the place where they would have the sabbath rest of God. It was the land of milk and honey, the promised land. But those who followed Moses out of Egypt and into the wilderness didn't have faith that God would allow them to take this land, and so they missed the chance to enter God's place of promised rest.

The writer goes on to show that Christ provides the way to a new Canaan, a new place of God's rest. A better rest, true rest, a participation in God's rest at the end of our work. We enter by faith, and the writer says, don't get goofy now that you've been invited into God's rest. We need to make every effort to demonstrate our faith in obedience.

For me, there is a sense that we enter God's rest, or at least get a taste of it, when we become Christians. I don't know if the author of Hebrews intended to say that or not. But we do have other passages that talk about God's peace, such as in Paul's letter to the Galatians where he says in 5:22 - "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness..." My task for the day is to make every effort to enter God's rest by living obediently.

What message from God did you hear in chapter four?